Trois chambres à Manhattan

Marcel Carné ,who was once one of the finest directors France had ever had ("les enfants du paradis",to name but one)was having a bad time during the sixties.He was ceaselessly criticized by the new wave.Instead of filming in his own and brilliant way,he tried to ape his persecutors."Les tricheurs" was his first attempt in that direction and it wasn't bad.But "trois chambres à Manhattan " hit rock bottom.A vague Simenon adapted screenplay ,a dirty cinematography,two prestigious actors and he might think the job was done.But he tried so hard to sound like the big boys of the new wave pack that he became some kind of caricature of it.Maurice Ronet tried here to do a second "feu follet" (Louis Malle) and his relationship with Girardot was so uninteresting that weren't it for the actors one would give up after fifteen minutes.Most of the time,it's an endless dialogue between the two leads who get the lion's share on the screen.Genevieve Page,for instance ,is hardly given five minutes in the prologue.The same goes for Roland Lesaffre's implausible pilot.

That was bad ,but Marcel Carné was to sink even lower afterwards.You'd better go back to those 1936-1945 years ,when he was at his peak.